Great component! It's been over 2 years ago since when we started our online shop. VM helped us to have a nice basis. Sure we modified it and tweaked it allot in order to suit our needs, but the component is very stable and has no noticable issues.
This is one of the real Joomla components, that really helped the Joomla Community to develop and to expand it's range.
Many thanks to the developers!

IMHO, Virtuemart is not perfect but I think it's great. I realized there is no such single cart solution that can fulfill everyone's needs, not even the paid ones. That's why I chose virtuemart as the closest possible solution to my needs.

I think this shopping cart is not category driven only because I can put my products into multiple categories (i.e product Wine A on category "Red Wine" & "$40-$100"). Then I created Joomla menu for every virtuemart category on separate menu groups ("By Type", "By Price Range", "By Countries", etc).

For manufacturer, I just simply used the manufacturer module so when I clicked on one manufacturer, it'll bring up all the products that were assigned under that manufacturer.

For vendors, I used it for multi vendor environment. So every vendor can login and put their products. I can adjust every vendor's access to whatever function I assign to them. Some vendors are able to see other vendor's products, some are not.

I also combined my store with other extensions such as classified ads. I am happy to have a shopping cart that I can combine with anything I want. Very cute!

At first glance this shopping cart system seems great, however, there are many flaws in its design that makes it pretty-much WORTHLESS ... thank god its free.

1. This shopping cart system is Category Driven ONLY! ... there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of filtering the products! They have created additional features like product TYPES and ATTRIBUTES to enhance the products ordering system, but if you want your customers to sort the products by any other means other than by Name, Category and a few things like Price ... then just FORGET IT!

2. Manufactures are worthless in this system. You can't do anything with them.

2. Vendors are worthless in this system. You can't do anything with them. Admittingly this feature is Beat.

3. No REAL support in the forums ... there are very few real developers working on this thing, and forget about Feature Requests ... out of the hundred or so, only 1 was fulfilled!

4. There are reasons why this thing is free ... is you want a BASIC shopping cart then this thing will work fine, beyond that go somewhere else.

I can understand the last few reviews, at first glance this can seem very daunting, however I have found if I stick to a tried and tested install approach it works fine. Install Joomla, install Virtuemart, install sh404sef (if needed), now do all your set up and make sure it all works. Be aware that there is a direct relationship between the Joomla global settings and the VM settings, and to get postage to work you need to make sure it is active in the path to purchase, these being the two most common issues. It also helps if you install the demo data as this will illustrate the settings very well. Having set it all up, back it up! Then you can add in all the other eye candy etc that you want on your site safe in the knowledge that if you mess up your install you can roll back to a good version.
My thanks to the developers and others in the community for their help in the past.

I have installed VirtueMart four times. And got it working on two sites. but only for a while.

Two major cautions need to be given to anyone that wants to use VirtueMart.

1. You MUST NOT be a Joomla newbie
2. You MUST know php

VirtueMart has so many capabilities it is compelling to download and install. But, if you plan a major store, you will need to know php.

If you are considering VirtueMart because it is free, its not. It will cost you many hours and days. Their forum is filled with posts from many people pleading for help. Many receive "me to" replies and many with zero replies that are months old.

If you want VirtueMart, hire a consultant that has at least 10 stores in their portfolio (and go visit them first). It won't be free, but you will improve your probability of success. For me, I'm bagging VM - its too expensive.

I have been implementing VirtueMart for a client for well over two months now. Yes it was my first implementation and initially was fairly impressed with the product. Still, fairly impressed but now that we are down to the wire issues are coming up that I believe most users will have trouble with.

1. There is no way to have multiple taxes configured, even though they have a multiple tax option. You can't have taxes based on shipping address for different cities. You can globally assign one tax rate to a state and not charge other states, but if you have to charge different tax rates within a state based on the shippers city, it is not possible.

2. Non-taxable items. They claim to be able to do this, which it can be done, but for some reason they have tied "non-taxable items" to the item weight. So if you don't want to charge tax on something then you don't put an item weight in the configuration. But then if the customer only orders that item that is non-taxable and has no weight, then the shipping module doesn't bring up the shipping options (like their UPS Shipping Module). Why would you tie "non-taxable items" to a shipping weight.

3. Customizable emails are virtually non-existent - unless you are a php guru. There are no templates for emails that are easy to manipulate. The initial email that a consumer receives on the order looks great. Subsequent emails are a simple text email that looks very elementary and as of the date of this review...the forums, the developers have provided no answers.

4. Before you use this extension, go register and get into the forums and look at the questions and see how many responses there are from actual developers vs. forum members.

There are other little things to that are annoyances, but are fairly easy to overcome. However, the items I have described are big, not just for me but for a lot of users. The tax thing is huge.

If you need a simple, out of the box (so to speak) solution with no complications for tax implications, no need for custom emails to your buyers, and just want to sell all items with one flat tax, then I would agree, this product is pretty easy to use.

I have lots of good things to say also. I am just being candid about the issues.

About time I posted a review. For those that expect a complete solution without any tweaking are always going to be disappointed with a system like this. It's big, has huge potential for many different types of sites, and it's open source.

Based on that, and the fact that I have made some money from it, how could it possibly be worth less than 5 stars? As someone else said, I'd give it 6 if I could.

I would like to see the forums become more community focused rather than so many expecting pro support (and getting frustrated when it doesn't happen). Other than that the forums are well thought out, and an effective way to find solutions to common problems.

This is a very feature rich extension that is a DEFINITE time saver for those who have do not have any shopping cart system developed.

The virtue mart forum seems very friendly and helpful.

i'd give this a 6/5 if i could...

Very nice component. I developed a music shop with this component. It has very good payment gateway integration scripts. very easy to maintain a store.

Nice package, works great.
keep up the good work.

VirtueMart installed very smoothly, lots of features. Works fine for a new shop without an existing product list. The one feature I wanted to use was the import/export feature component. There is lots of useful advice on delimiters etc, but unless you want to do it through phpAdmin I'd wait until this component has been updated.

VirtueMart is loaded with features, for a worldwide audience. This can be a challenge to wade through the features and get it running the way you want because everyone has their own expectations. But the price is right!

The VirtueMart Forum is a better place to ask for help than here, and I've found a lot of help by post questions directly in Google.

In response to a couple of previous posts I offer the following...

1) "Can't have products with no shipping, Really? by domdeez, September 2, 2008"

Actually you can do this. You'll have to create a Shipping Rate List, starting with 0 (zero) weight at $0.00. So for that I would put "Highest Weight 0.010, Lowest Weight 0.00. Then put 0 (zero) weight for your product.

2) "Not compatible with Community Builder by paul.shane, August 17, 2008"

Did you try the VirtueMart plugin for Community Builder? http://www.e-motion.com.au/open-source/virtuemart-plugin-for-community-builder.html

Excellent shopping cart component with flexible features..
Look and feel options are really cool
The new Version looks great..
Thanks

Quite new to Joomla, I tried to install several extensions including CB, VM, AEC and some others. Although for a newbie for me means has to dig a lot in both manuals and forums, I found all the maverick extensions are great including VM.

Now my site is live for selling ebook and subscription. I don't agree with previous comment which said VM doesn't work with no shipping, in fact it does work for my site. The most important thing is to dig well both the manual and the forum. Almost all answers for a beginner are already there. In order to get a free stuff running well, we have to be willing to do that.

Also, my CB just works fine with VM. I think the reason every extension has their own user database is because Joomla default user management doesn't have flexibility to add more fields such address, phone, etc. Some users just want to install CB only, some are VM only, some are FB only, etc. Why does a user who wants to have shopping cart only have to install CB too, or vice versa?

Besides there are already some sort of micro integrations among them. You just need to dig it up in their forums.

After configuring this product, I realized that you cannot have products with no shipping costs. Wow. What waste of my time. I know it is a free product, but I cannot believe it lacks such a basic feature.